


Play it, Sam

by anonymous_sibyl



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-03
Updated: 2006-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_sibyl/pseuds/anonymous_sibyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'll always have Paris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play it, Sam

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://k-julia.livejournal.com/profile)[**k_julia**](http://k-julia.livejournal.com/) who asked in a meme for "Five Times Lee Did Kiss Laura." Four drabbles and a ficlet, all unrelated. Title and summary from _Casablanca_.
> 
> This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/). None of the media or characters written about in my fanfiction belong to me and I make no profit from these works.

I.

She doesn't look like a criminal. With her stockinged feet, one rubbing atop the other, and her wrinkled skirt, she looks like a schoolteacher slowly waking from a nightmare.

"What's the verdict, Captain?"

"You look tired."

"As do you."

He reaches out and catches her hand in his. "Stop pacing." Laura's fingers are cold and without thinking he raises them to his mouth to blow on them. He turns her hand over, smoothes her fingers apart, then presses his lips to the palm of her hand. She's cold, but getting warmer. So is he.

"Captain," she says. Then, "Apollo."  
II.

"We can't trust him."

"We don't." She crossed her arms over her chest. "_We_ also don't like how he's always touching _us_."

Lee pulled Laura into his arms and kissed her hair. "No. We don't like that at all."

"We need him."

"I know." He wished they didn't, but, right now Tom Zarek was keeping them safe. It was something he couldn't do for Laura, so he was glad someone could, even if that someone kept putting his hands all over her. "Can I hit him?"

She tilted her face up to his and smiled. "No. Well, yes. Maybe. Later."  
III.

They frak in closets and storage areas, last week she blew him in the presidential transport, and he once delivered a briefing with the scent of her still on his fingers and tongue. They frak everywhere, all the time, any way they can. She's got no stockings without tears left by his greedy fingers, and he's stopped wearing underwear because it saves time.

The one thing they don't do, will never do, is kiss. Kissing is about love and this thing between them is about survival, about knowing you're still alive, even when you're sure you don't deserve to be.  
IV.

"Dee," he said, with a vague gesture that he hoped explained everything to the woman standing in front of him.

"The baby," she said in return. "The school." Her gesture was as vague as his, and as clear.

"It was nice while it lasted."

"It was nice while we both wanted it."

She was lying and so was he. Together they were many things, but they were never nice.

"I have to go." She nodded so he turned to walk away.

"Lee?"

When he turned back, he kissed her. Goodbye wasn't nice either, but at least it could be bearable.  
V.

It was nothing like a story. The field they ran across was muddy and barren and there were bodies--human and cylon--everywhere. The only rising music came from the sobs of the survivors and the low rumble of pain and protest from the prisoners.

"Laura!" He hadn't dared hope. It seemed too much to ask, that she'd survive the first war and this one. "LAURA!"

She looked... amazing. Exhausted, too thin, and she was standing funny, as if something was wrong with her arm. When he got nearer, he could see blood on her shirt, and the skin exposed by a tear in the material was raw. He should have been there to protect her. He said as much when he reached her side and, heedless of her wound--and his--took her in his arms.

She stepped back from his embrace and gestured over the field. "We fought. We had to fight."

"And you got hurt."

"We all got hurt, Lee. You left us behind, and there was nothing else we could do."

No, this was nothing like a story, and Laura wasn't a woman to whom he had to explain tactics. "You would have left in my place."

"You would have fought in mine."

"So we're the same, then."

"Yes." She took a step closer to him and pulled his arms around her. "We're the same. We're tired, we're injured, and we ought to be lying down while Doc Cottle takes a look at us."

"But...?"

"But instead we're standing in the muck and the cold because we can't let go of each other."

"I never could let go of you, Laura." He stroked his finger across her cheek, then kissed the mark that his finger and her tears had left there. "I never could let go."


End file.
